DEL MAR, Calif. - Wickedly Perfect gave jockey Rafael Bejarano his fourth win on Friday with a game performance in the $150,000 Sorrento Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Del Mar.
Bejarano won the third through fifth races, did not ride the sixth, and returned to win the Grade 3 Sorrento. Sent off as the fourth choice, Wickedly Perfect ($13.80) was always near the front, stalking pacesetters Dawnie Macho and Final Mesa through a quick pace of 21.89 and 44.90 seconds.
Crow’s Nest, a 6-year-old gelding who was running for a $20,000 claiming tag as recently as June, scored the biggest victory of his 23-race career Friday night at Penn National Race Course when he upset the $75,000 Robellino Stakes for Pennsylvania-breds.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Apple Martini and Home’s the Best might well be the top two betting choices in the featured fifth race on Sunday at Arlington, but there are concerns of time and distance in play.
Apple Martini raced and won barely more than two weeks ago, and trainer Chris Block is uncertain what to expect from the short turnaround. Home’s the Best raced and won by more than five lengths on July 16, but that victory came in a one-turn mile.
AUBURN, Wash. – Emerald Downs’s muddled 2-year-old picture will come into sharper focus Sunday with the running of two $50,000 stakes races, the Premio Esmeralda for colts and geldings and the Angie C. for fillies. Both races are six furlongs, and they’ll go as the sixth and eighth events on a nine-race card that begins at 2 p.m. Pacific.
Six horses were entered for the Premio Esmeralda, with Couldabenthewhisky, undefeated in two starts, and Seattle Sniper likely to vie for the role of favorite.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – South Florida can be awfully inhospitable this time of year, be it the heat, the humidity, or the results for shippers for the Summit of Speed. Hour Glass headed to Calder last month as one of the top contenders for the Grade 1 Princess Rooney Handicap, but she never fired, finishing sixth of 11 on a day when they might as well have put up a sign that said “locals only.”
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Hollywood moved to upstate New York on Friday. First it was the improbable story of Lisa's Booby Trap in the Loudonville Stakes, and then Always First provided the tear-jerking final scene when he rallied to capture the $70,000 John's Call, a race named after the popular former stakes winner of Tom Voss, the trainer of Always First.
“You want it to happen, but you don’t think it could happen,” Voss said.
Voss was dismissive of the chances of Always First leading up to the race.
Double Chiseled will get some class relief Sunday, when he tries to nail down his first career stakes win in the Grade 3, $30,000 Mr. Jet Moore Handicap for Quarter Horses at Ruidoso Downs. He will be dropping in from Grade 1 company for the 400-yard race, one start after hooking past world champion Stolis Winner in the Texas Challenge Championship at Sam Houston.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – South Florida can be awfully inhospitable this time of year, be it the heat, the humidity, or the results for shippers for the Summit of Speed. Hour Glass headed to Calder last month as one of the top contenders for the Grade 1 Princess Rooney Handicap, but she never fired, finishing sixth of 11 on a day when they might as well have put up a sign that said “locals only.”
Sunday’s running of the $50,000 Joseph T. Grace at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif., looks an awful lot like a repeat of a June 13 allowance race at Golden Gate Fields.
Sir Al, who won that one-mile turf race, returns as does runner-up Restless Youth and third-place finisher Live Sundays.
But there is an “X” factor in Sunday’s 1 1/16-mile turf race. Moudez comes into the Grace off back-to-back wins, including a victory in the Forerunner Stakes at Keeneland. The victories, though, came three years ago, in 2007, and he hasn’t run since April of that year.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Trainers Scott Volk and Bruce Alexander felt good about their chances in the $100,000 Select Stakes for 3-year-olds on Sunday at Monmouth.
That was before they checked the entries, and saw the race got a whole lot tougher with the addition of Comedero.
A winner of 8 of 9, Comedero usually has his races wrapped up long before the finish wire. Comedero faces only four rivals in the six furlong race with
Robby Albarado aboard.
